Gov. Bill Haslam shrugs off Pilot Flying J links to coal company

Jun. 28, 2013

Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam / Mark Humphrey / File / Associated Press

Written by

Erik Schelzig

Associated Press

Gov. Bill Haslam says he is unconcerned that a company seeking coal mining rights on public land in Tennessee is managed by a board member of Pilot Flying J, the truck stop chain owned by the Haslam family.

Hillsborough Resources, a subsidiary of the Vitol Group, has been negotiating to mine coal within the Catoosa Wildlife Management Area near Crossville. The president and CEO of Vitol’s North and South American operations, Mike Loya, serves on the Pilot board.

Haslam, who owns an undisclosed stake in Pilot, told The Associated Press this week that he doesn’t know Loya personally. A Vitol representative did not immediately return a message seeking comment. The governor shrugged off questions about the multiple connections between the coal company and Pilot.

“That’s just how life works a lot of time,” Haslam said. “Look, there’s a whole lot of lobbyists who represent a whole lot of different people.

“There’s just a lot of people who have overlapping interests,” he said.

Tom Ingram, a close adviser to both the governor and Pilot, faces a hearing by the Tennessee Ethics Commission over his failure to register as a lobbyist on behalf of Hillsborough. Ingram ran Haslam’s 2010 gubernatorial campaign and has also coordinated the company’s public response to an FBI raid on Pilot’s headquarters in April. The privately-held company is run by the governor’s brother, Jimmy Haslam, who also is the owner of the NFL’s Cleveland Browns.

Five members of the Pilot sales team have pleaded guilty to charges of mail fraud and are cooperating with federal prosecutors in the ongoing investigation.

Gov. Haslam announced Tuesday that he will soon begin paying Ingram out of his re-election campaign account instead of through personal funds. Ingram did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Meanwhile, a dozen federal lawsuits filed against Pilot could be consolidated before a single judge.

Various plaintiffs have asked for the cases to be shifted to federal courts in northern Ohio, southern Mississippi or middle Tennessee. Pilot wants the cases to be heard in Knoxville, where the company is based and where most of the defendants live. Nineteen of 35 employees mentioned in an FBI affidavit released after the April raid on Pilot headquarters live in Tennessee, according to the company.

Pilot said it would also agree to having the cases heard in Nashville or Chicago.

Consolidating and transferring the cases would help avoid duplication, inconsistent rulings and an “unseemly race to judgment,” Pilot said in a legal filing late last week.

The federal lawsuits have been filed in Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Illinois, Florida, Ohio and Tennessee. A federal panel on multidistrict litigation is scheduled to hear oral arguments on consolidating the cases in late July.

Several other lawsuits have been filed in state courts.

Five members of the Pilot sales team have pleaded guilty to mail fraud charges and are cooperating with federal prosecutors. Jimmy Haslam, the brother of Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam, has said he was unaware of the alleged conspiracy to defraud trucking company customers until he read the FBI affidavit.

The governor, who was president of Pilot until he was elected Knoxville mayor in 2003, retains an undisclosed financial stake in Pilot, but has no active operational role in the company with annual revenues of $31 billion.